Information Governance: Knowing is Half the Battle

GDPR and CCPA have had a wide impact on how we think about what constitutes data knowledge. Your business needs to know what data it has collected, and where it's kept, in addition to a wide variety of other data variables. But as stated in the G.I. JOE cartoons of old, knowing is only half the battle. It's one thing to know what data you have and where it is, but it's another thing entirely to actually manage it. This is information governance.

Information governance requires true, comprehensive knowledge and understanding. The ubiquity of dark data as well as more stringent privacy guidelines has made it all the more necessary to understand aspects about your data beyond simple metrics like location and file size. Rather, you need to know much broader aspects of data, like content, time sent, recipients, and other such metadata. If knowledge is power, you can't very well wield that power without understanding your data.

Take analytics, for example. We've spoken at length about analytics working for you and your business. Too often though, companies treat their information governance solutions and analytics solutions as separate entities. That doesn't have to be the case. In fact, it's counter-productive. The more silos you set up, the less streamlined your data solution becomes, and the less accurate the analytics are. Inaccurate analytics don't work.

Likewise, compliance, eDiscovery, records management, and archiving are all important facets of data management that are kept separate when an integrated solution would be better. This is true governance. Governance means "to govern." Imagine trying to govern six different silos of data that may include overlap, when you're storing terabytes upon terabytes of data. You'd lose your mind.

This is why information governance needs to be unified. Sure, you can get away with disparate, cobbled together elements, but you're hindering the ability of your business to truly optimize data management and processing. Knowing is half the battle-- governing is the other half. You have to deeply understand your data to make it work for you.

Dark Data data management information governance regulation

Tucker Partridge is a graduate of the University of Arkansas, and a newly minted Bay Area resident. He is a professional marketing associate, a semi-professional comedian, and an amateur trivia enthusiast.